Wednesday, March 26, 2014

9th Circuit Agrees With San Francisco

The Ninth Circuit agreed with the city of San Francisco yesterday saying local ordinances requiring firearms in the home must be either on the person or locked up. They also allowed San Francisco's ban on the purchase but not possession of hollow point bullets to stand.

This panel of judges was decidedly not as friendly to the Second Amendment as the panel that decided Peruta, Richards, and Baker. The unanimous decision was written by Judge Sandra Ikuta who is a George W. Bush appointee.

Professor Eugene Volokh has his analysis of Jackson et al v. City and County of San Franciscohere. He is rather skeptical of their decision and concludes:

As I’ve argued before (and in detail in pp. 1454-61 of Implementing the Right to Keep and Bear Arms for Self-Defense), I think the right to keep and bear arms has long been understood throughout American history as allowing various kinds of regulations that don’t substantially interfere with self-defense. That is also compatible with how many other rights are treated (setting aside equality rights, such as the Equal Protection Clause ban on race discrimination, or the First Amendment bans on religious discrimination or discrimination based on the content of speech). So the hollow-point ban may well be properly seen as constitutional, though I think it’s a bad idea. But I’m skeptical of the court’s conclusion that the locked-storage-when-not-carrying requirement is constitutional.